Monday, March 12, 2018

Sitting in the National Portrait Gallery cafe on 2nd October 2007 I
noticed Ken Dodd having tea at another table. Having just seen the
portrait of him by David Cobley I decided to go over and ask Ken what he
thought of it. He was with his partner Ann Jones. Both were very
friendly and we had a conversation as if we were old acquaintances.

Apart from occasional flights of brilliant and surreal invention, his
brand of comedy was never really my thing. But I will always remember
open, unpretentious and gracious Ken Dodd with affection from that
serendipitous meeting and the autograph he gave me has been pinned above
my desk ever since.

Monday, March 05, 2018

Teeth. Do you want to talk about teeth? I'll go ahead anyway. A bit of torture at the dentist this morning motivates me.

I was born with wonky teeth. They showed up when baby teeth
usually show up. Why didn't my parents notice? Why didn't they take me
to an orthodontist immediately? Because it was Paris and they were busy
having a good time, I suppose but I could be wrong. Anyway I grew up
with wonky teeth, too crowded, whatever. Later in America I was the odd
one out in school because all the kids
were giants with perfect teeth. 99% of Americans have perfect teeth, it
must be all that milk. I was (am) short, hated milk, had buck teeth and
spoke with a French accent. As time went by I adapted and my smile was
good enough, sexy enough to get by in this tooth-eat-tooth world.

However, there's always a big however if you're born with wonkies, and
as much more time went by the wonkiness played up. I'll skip the details
but below is a page from my book Augustine's True Confession (1979)
just to illustrate this post. If you want to read the book (it's
good and not about teeth) I'll send you a copy, signed, for £10 plus
postage. Yes that was a commercial break, an honest one.

As I was saying, lots of time went by and now it's today
and I've just been tortured at the dentist because another loose tooth
had to go. So today I have only 12 teeth of my own, 4 at the top and 8
at the bottom. Yesterday I had 13.

I know I shouldn't be talking
about this because it's a secret. We who are afflicted with...um...the D
word...it starts with dent.....Got it? We who have those fakes have to
pretend they're real. But they ain't, right? Fake news ain't real news
and never shall be. That's all for today.

Please note well: the page below (from the book) was written in 1979. I do not have pain in my mouth today. The injection before today's extraction was painful but it's gone now and I'm fine.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

This morning, in the waiting room of a local hospital before my
dermatology appointment ( a minor skin thing needing occasional review) I
watched the people sitting there in total silence, mostly old, mostly
grim-faced, and I had an urge to get up and say:

We're all going to die
sooner or later so.....let's face the music and dance!

Then I would
dance and sing with each one of them. That was the movie in my head. The
urge was irresistible but I resisted it.

I can't seem to get a decent photo of it in any light.
The colours are wrong, you can't see that the figure on the right is the
same as the painting hanging behind her, you can't read the title
written on the frame and so on.

My camera is an old ordinary Canon
Power Shot and I think it's exhausted. Will try again when I can say
that this boxwork is definitely finished. It's been over a year since I
started it....oops,I've just checked ... I actually began building the box in September 2016! Here's the blog post about it.